MS Unveils Beta of New Image Editing Program

docdude316 writes "CNET is running a story about Microsoft's new photo editing software, Acrylic. The new program is based on Expression, which Microsoft purchased in 2003. From the article: 'Microsoft describes the software--currently available as a 77MB free download--as bringing together pixel-based painting and vector graphics features. These capabilities will put the product squarely in the market currently dominated by software maker Adobe Systems with its pixel-focused Photoshop and vector-driven Illustrator products. Acrylic appears to support opening and exporting to Photoshop and Illustrator file formats, as well as other standard graphics formats. In addition, the application appears to be able to export to Adobe's Portable Document Format, or PDF.'

Comments

Nice

[daniil]

I downloaded the beta yesterday and installed it on my home box. I must say that I was quite impressed, especially with the usability (especially when compared to Gimp). It was a bit slow on my 800 mhz Pentium III, though. Even though I doubt that Microsoft will conquer this market, it's still nice to finally see some real competition to Photoshop, especially considering that the price of Acrylic will be much lower than that of Photoshop.

Adobemedia

[tverbeek]

So maybe there's something to the notion that Adobe bought Macromedia (who also have an hybrid vector/bitmap graphics program) as a defensive move against Microsoft.

Re:M$ is really on a tear today...

[Juvenall]

Taking one idea and using it yourself is a cornerstone of capitalism. So I don't understand why you're basing Microsoft for doing what every other business has done throughout human history. It's really like saying "Oh, don't buy a Ford because they didn't invent the car."

Re:Office

[wfberg]

Printing to PDF does NOT dump a bitmap image into a PDF container. Try it. Printing to PDF first prints using a postscript driver (driven bij Window's native GDI/EMF format), and then converts to PDF. This entire path is vector based, unless the printing application fucks up.

And yes, PDFCreator will embed fonts, be they truetype, type-1 or opentype, and even subset.

Also, if you DO want a bitmap, PDFCreator will print to JPG, PNG, etc.

Note that if you have an Oo.o document that uses transparancy, Oo.o's export to PDF function WILL rasterize transparant sections, while PDFCreator will retain vectors. PDFCreator will even add metadata, encryption and stuff like that.

Exporting directly to PDF will help in one area; if you're creating a file that isn't supposed to be in one of the standard paper size like Letter or A4. Also, it's faster than GDI->PS->PDF.